Although it seems like an ideal way to improve health by tracking sleep, calories, and exercise, it has potential harmful effects
Smart watches are promoted for their features in tracking health indicators, and their role in promoting physical fitness by providing features that help track various motor activities, etc. But what is the impact of using smart watches on mental health?
Although owning a smartwatch seems like an ideal way to improve health by tracking sleep, calories, and exercise, the potential negative effects of using it are not mentioned.
Whether you are considering buying a smartwatch or owning one, being aware of the potential harmful effects of owning a wearable device is important. Here are 4 ways in which smartwatches can negatively affect your mental health:
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1- Smart watches focus on tracking calories
For many people, focusing on burning calories and constantly reminding them of them can negatively affect their mental health, especially if they suffer from eating disorders or cannot perform daily exercises to burn more calories, and the Apple Watch in particular can be a problem. For them, because it doesn’t allow you to disable the calorie tracking feature.
2- Smartwatches constantly distract you and interrupt your day
Having a smart watch means that you have another device to constantly access notifications, which may affect your mental health and distract you, as receiving a large amount of notifications from your phone and smart watch may lead to anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems, and it will also reduce your focus while performing various tasks.
3- Smart watches can lead to excessive exercise
There is a risk of becoming obsessed with exercise if you use a smartwatch regularly, given the features of encouraging you to increase your fitness goals each week that many smartwatches feature, you may resort to overexerting, and given that completing sports goals Makes you happy It’s easy to become obsessed with achieving your fitness goals at the expense of your mental health.
4- Smart watches expose you to the risk of addiction to their use
Given the encouragement badges and attractive animations that appear on smartwatches every time you achieve a certain goal, it is easy to become addicted to using smartwatches.
You can have a mixture of mixed feelings between joy and a sense of accomplishment every time you achieve your goals, feelings of anxiety if you fail to achieve your goals, and you can also feel panic if your smartwatch fails to track your activity or properly monitor your progress towards your goal.
Smart watches can give you multiple benefits, but due to excessive focus on exercise, increased activity, and burning calories, smart watches can have a detrimental effect on your mental health.
If you feel that your mental health has been affected by the smart watch, turn off notifications in it, remove the watch at times, or reduce the sports goals that you follow on your watch.
